Information on working terriers, dogs, natural history, hunting, and the environment, with occasional political commentary as I see fit. This web log is associated with the Terrierman.com web site.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Coffee and Provocation

God Bless the Nigerian Web Scammers!I never thought I would say it, but I am starting to really like the Nigerian web scammers who send emails and put up fake web sites to con people out of their money. The reason: It seems they are now attacking both sides of the online puppy equation -- the customers and the dog breeders. Their intent, of course, is simply to make money, but how does that make them any different from the hump and dump breeders who send dogs to people they have never met, and who have web sites that proudly say "We take PayPal." As for that "conference in Nigeria" mentioned in the first link, here's a little more about that. You gotta love it!

PetPAC May Give the Lunatics a RunThe Animal Rights lunatics have overplayed their hand far enough that they have created a new permanent backlash in the form of a Pet Political Action Committee, or PAC, devoted to ending mandatory spay-neuter legislation. PetPAC raised $200,000 to help defeat the recent California law, and it's looking to make itself a new permanent political force.

Madness and Mayhem:Steve H. sent me an article about a local woman entitled "Kids, Puppy Used As Roadblocks During Fight -- Puppy Dies; Children Not Injured." The kicker in this article is that this woman has already gotten a new puppy -- supplied by her also-insane boyfriend.

Idaho Wolves are Killing Cattle ... or Is It the Farmers?You never hear farmers, ranchers or sheep men being blamed for killing their own stock from negligence and poor management skills, but that's more common that you can imagine. If you run too much stock on overgrazed country, don't shelter stock from weather, and don't supply clean water, mortality rises fast. In Idaho right now, a drought has set the stage for wolves being blamed for stock losses, but the pictures and a little on-the-ground look-see suggests a different story and a different causality..

2 comments:

What I see in the pictures are stock tanks that are not hooked up and cows drinking muddy water where their own feces float. Looks like a bad set up to me, and unless those stock tanks are hooked up, you can predict sick cattle without being contradicted by nature.

As for pictures of range land before and after grazing, check these out >> http://www.westernwatersheds.org/facts_photos/photos/before_after/bapages/before_after.html No shortage of pictures there!

Drought conditions in Idaho can be tracked by looking at litigation concerning groundwater pullouts (what I was doing this morning), or by looking at stream flow data at the map at >> http://wa.water.usgs.gov/news/drought/id.html

So far in 2007, the Idaho Dept. of Water Resources has issued 13 Drought Emergency Declarations. See >> http://www.idwr.state.id.us/about/issues/drought.htm for a listing.

Drought is going to be an undercurrent in beetle-bore infestations in the woods too. When water is short, the trees cannot produce sap to expel the beetles, and so beetle infestation rises very fast.

Drought, of course, is a natural part of the American West. Those groundwater pulls are so important because they can rapidly impact surface water flows over a very large area, depending how big the well is and how wide the cone of depression.